Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom,

and insights from parents just like you all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

How to think about your approach.

It was Seneca who said that a wise philosopher doesn't just study their particular school of thought, but surveys widely, taking and absorbing ideas from any and all thinkers.

He would say he read like a spy in the enemy's camp, and that he'd quote even a bad author if the line was good.

That is why Seneca discusses the ideas of Epicurus so much in his famous letters, which

is a must read I carried over at the painted porch.

Even though the Epicureans and the Stoics were rivals, Seneca was intimately familiar with

their precepts, borrowing the ones he liked, clarifying his own thinking when he disagreed

with theirs. As it happens, this is also a

great model for us to follow as parents. There are all sorts of things that Montessoria gets right,

and stuff that might not work for your family. The idea of taking children seriously, as we

talked about recently, is interesting and valuable, not just as a kind of mantra, even if that's all you take.

There is aware parenting. There are cool strategies developed by homeschooling parents and unschooling

parents and tiger parents and something to be said about the parents who just drop their kids off

at public school and never think about it further than that. There are awesome little hacks

and ideas from influencers on TikTok and Instagram, as well as terrible ideas that you should do

the exact opposite of. In a sense, the Daily Dad, another book I think you should probably read,

is built along the approach that Seneca outlined. It's a survey course of different thinkers, different ideas, different insights.

Some apply to you, some don't.

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